, and still more largely by their mistresses. From all quarters the
expression was common that the promotion of religion among the slaves was
not only the duty of masters but was to their interest as well in that it
elevated the morals of the workmen and improved the quality of the service
they rendered.[8]

[Footnote 8: _Proceedings of the Meeting in Charleston, S.C., May 13-15,
1845, on the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, together with the Report
of the Committee and the Address to the Public_ (Charleston, 1845). The
reports of the Association for the Religious Instruction of Negroes in
Liberty County, Georgia, printed annually for a dozen years or more in the
'thirties and 'forties, relate the career of a particularly interesting
missionary work in that county on the rice coast, under the charge of the
Reverend C.C. Jones. The tenth report in the series (1845) summarizes the
work of the first decade, and the twelfth (1847) surveys the conditions
then prevalent. In C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_
(Nashville, [1857]) the ninth chapter is made up of reports on the mission
activities of that church among the negroes in various quarters of the
South.]

In general, the less the cleavage of creed between master and man, the
better for both, since every factor conducing to solidarity of sentiment
was of advantage in promoting harmony and progress. When the planter went
to sit under his rector while the slave stayed at home to hear an exhorter,
just so much was lost in the sense of fellowship. It was particularly
unfortunate that on the rice coast the bulk of the blacks had no
co-religionists except among the non-slaveholding whites with whom they had
more conflict than community of economic and sentimental interest. On
the whole, however, in spite of the contrary suggestion of irresponsible
religious preachments and manifestations, the generality of the negroes
everywhere realized, like the whites, that virtue was to be acquired by
consistent self-control in the performance of duty rather man by the
alternation of spasmodic reforms and relapses.

Occasionally some hard-headed negro would resist the hypnotic suggestion
of his preacher, and even repudiate glorification on his death-bed. A
Louisiana physician recounts the final episode in the career of "Old Uncle
Caleb," who had long been a-dying. "Before his departure, Jeff, the negro
preacher of the place, gathered his sable flock of saints and